Raymond Roland Lecavelier was born in Tourlaville on 7 October 1921 and lived there during the occupation. He was arrested and deported to Buchenwald on 2 September 1943. Later he was transferred east to the Lublin-Majdanek camp in occupied Poland. He died there on 8 March 1944, one of many young Normans destroyed by Nazi repression.
Raymond Lecavelier, unmarried, was a butcher at the Cherbourg arsenal and lived at 210 rue Carnot in Tourlaville. Called up for forced labour (STO) in Germany, he was taken hostage on 17 June 1943 with ten other conscripts for an “anti-German demonstration”: during the train journey, stopped at Sotteville-lès-Rouen station, they had daubed the wagon with graffiti and spoken against Hitler. Held for 18 days in Rouen, he was moved to Compiègne on 5 July 1943, deported to Buchenwald on 2 September (number 20,122) and sent to the Dora tunnel on 29 September. According to his comrade Marcel Cajon, he “was always a very good Frenchman, even in the hardest moments”. His health failed after Christmas 1943; the SS sent him on 6 February 1944 to the Lublin-Majdanek camp, where he died on 8 March 1944, aged 22. His name is on the war memorials of Tourlaville and Saint-Lô.
Source: pupils of year 9 (3ème) of collège REP+ Les Provinces, Cherbourg-en-Cotentin, 2024-2026.
